Questions about defaults, optionals, arrays, null/undefined

[biljecki]

Questions about defaults, optionals, arrays, null/undefined

[paralin]

Protobuf 3 cannot distinguish between unset fields and zero fields. The zero value is not sent on the wire.

[stephenh]

Hi @biljecki ; unfortunately @paralin is right and this is just a fact of life with protobuf, that optional handling is really suboptimal/all over the place.

Per the arrays, I glanced at a fromJSON in our integration/simple directory and it is setting the array to []:

  fromJSON(object: any): Simple {
    return {
      name: isSet(object.name) ? globalThis.String(object.name) : "",
      age: isSet(object.age) ? globalThis.Number(object.age) : 0,
      createdAt: isSet(object.createdAt) ? fromJsonTimestamp(object.createdAt) : undefined,
      child: isSet(object.child) ? Child.fromJSON(object.child) : undefined,
      state: isSet(object.state) ? stateEnumFromJSON(object.state) : 0,
      grandChildren: globalThis.Array.isArray(object?.grandChildren)
        ? object.grandChildren.map((e: any) => Child.fromJSON(e))
        : [],

And the type of grandChildren is [].

As you can tell, many others have disliked proto3's optional behavior, and we have ~more than a few options for attempting to make them not suck, but there are pros/cons to each.

Happy to see doc/bug fix PRs if you have very specific behavior that needs improved/fixes bug, but otherwise I'm going to close this out. Thanks!